


Moments Gone By

by lordwhat



Category: Supernatural, Superwho - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-03
Updated: 2013-12-03
Packaged: 2018-01-03 08:09:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1068091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordwhat/pseuds/lordwhat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Superwho Drabble: Cas as the Doctor just after the Time War.<br/>Unbeta’d.</p><p>WARNINGS: Mentions of violence in the time war, also genocide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moments Gone By

There’s so much life. So much noise.

Castiel has never been one for crowds, though they can be helpful on occasion when trying to maintain cover, they’re not something he often chooses to surround himself with. The feeling of so many presences around him can be overpowering and nerve racking at the best of times. But today it is a welcome distraction as he sits on a low wall in a crowded street in a corner of the universe untouched by the war.

Today is different. So different. So different in fact it may just shape the days yet to come.

Today is the day after the last. And although that can most probably, actually that can most definitely, be said about most days it is the that last day that makes this day so significant. It is the first step of the rest of his life.

 

Yesterday he stood in a field that was so green it glowed like the aurora, the sky blue above him. Yesterday he watched as day turned into night and the sky darkened, revealing the far off lights of explosions that were forever twisting in time. Having never happened, having had happened and yet unfolding as he watched. He watched lights flare and fade, taking the stars with them, so many lives snuffed out. So he sat on a bench with the Moment, wearing a face he now can’t remember for trying, and he begged it to end the pain.

And yesterday, it had listened.

Yesterday, everyone died.

 

Balthazar, Anna, Samandriel, every family member he’d ever known, everyone he hadn’t. Children, mothers, fathers, soldiers, pacifists. They burned alike. Gallifrey was gone.

It is ironic that a world once heralded as the bringer of peace should be the one to burn in the bringing of it; that the one who never really belonged there should be the one to survive.

Not that he should now be allowed to feel any measure of peace. The one to end it all. The being with the most blood on his hands.

Metaphorical blood, of course. He thinks that might have been easier if he had some gruesome image to match with the guilt. Broken bodies, fire, glazed eyes. But no, he remembers that park. That sky. And the moment he watched the sky light up with fire and dared to think “It’s almost beautiful.”

 

And now where does he go? The day after the last. The day before the rest.

Well, apparently Kansas, Earth, early 21st century. Which can’t be said to be very profound but he’ll take what he can get and it’s not like he’s staying.

Earth was always his favourite due to it’s life. It’s unbending determination to survive apocalypse upon apocalypse. Pollution, war, meteors, it’s own inhabitants. Who are quite remarkable themselves. As the Earth spins despite it’s troubles so do they, not literally obviously that would be cause for concern, but in their everyday lives. Their remarkable routines.

The question of how the mundane even began as a concept when each life is so intricate, so complicated, has always baffled Castiel. People being accused of being simple just because they live their lives has always seemed unjust.

Most would say his way of life is far more interesting with the opportunities he has to explore and maybe that’s true. But he only gained those opportunities only out of dumb luck. Born on the planet with the right technology, with a high council that was so corrupt he was basically forced to run from them out of annoyance.

If he’d have been born on Earth, as he often likes to imagine, he may not have wandered to see the stars but he would most likely have tried, as the people surrounding him are everyday. Trying to get the most out of what they’ve been given. Yes, he may have been to different planets or times but that is not what his life amounts to. The thrill of life is in the doing, never in what has been done. In the spirit, not the trophies.

They live so much. So much more than you would think at a first glance, as the brush of an arm shocks you out of your thoughts when they hurry past you and speak a rushed apology. So many individual lives mixed together and somehow kept far from each other. They’re so pure, so full of good intentions, so less stained than him.

 

Gallifrey was never like this. Too self aware to be adventurous. Too in love with itself and it’s superiority to allow any room for other ways of living. He’d always felt at home on Earth more than there. It’s a terrible confession considering what has passed, but it’s a truth nonetheless.

But Gallifrey’s gone and he is not, he lives on. He needs penance and there is no one to deliver it but himself. So he asked himself what would hurt the most.

It’s another goodbye.

Earth is a home he has always loved, so now it’s one he cannot have. He sits here today preparing to say goodbye to one of his worlds just as he did for another yesterday.

 

He slips away, into an old blue box on the corner. She greets him as always, amazing and a haven. The ache already beginning to form dulls a little at seeing her. The only constant. Still, he should keep busy. He likes the idea of Women Wept, those frozen waves and 3 week long improv orchestra concerts might do something to distract him, maybe they’ll even let him play the triangle again.

He goes to set the coordinates, trying not to drag his feet too much on his way to the console, only to see it’s all already pre-set when he gets there. He glares at the monitor.

"Am I that predictable?"

He gets a couple of beeps as a reply. He rolls his eyes and reaches for the handbrake. And that’s when the temporal news-feed goes off.

Typical.


End file.
